"Posters cause outrage at USM"

A poster promoting a show at a Hub City bar drew the ire of some University of Southern Mississippi students and faculty members as being "degrading to women," prompting school officials to pull copies down around campus Friday.

"There is a pervasive hatred of women in our culture, and it is scary to see an expression of that in our midst," said outraged Southern Miss English Professor Nicolle Jordan, co-chair of the university's Committee on Services and Resources for Women.

The poster, taped to approximately 20 campus locations Thursday for a Cash Fountain concert today at The Tavern, featured a drawing of a naked woman with her head bowed and her hands tied behind her back.

Cash Fountain is a local group of DJs that performed at Eaglepalooza last year.

Members Greg Brooking and Drew Bardin said they were surprised by the reaction to the posters that they admitted to placing around campus. "We weren't trying to make people mad," said Brooking a 2010 Southern Miss alumnus, who explained that it was for a BDSM-themed costume party.

BDSM is an acronym suggesting bondage, domination and sado-masochism.

But what troubled doctoral creative writing student Christina Rothenbeck, one of several English graduate students to complain, was the posters' decontextualized image of a submissive woman.

That's why she defaced many of the them Thursday with graffiti reading: "This is what rape culture looks like," "She is not an object," "Degrading women degrades everyone," and "Rape is everyone's problem." ...